Question. Is it necessary to trust a mentor for the confession of thoughts, or is it enough to believe that the mentor is given to you from God?

Answer. If you believe that a teacher is given to you from God, then, it seems to me, this is the greatest degree of trust - we believe in God.

Question. If the Lord knows who will be saved, but at the same time does not exert any pressure on the freedom of human choice, then can our activity influence God's predestination?

Answer. Why think about it? Here is my thought: even if there were God's predestination that I, such a sinner, should perish, it seems to me that I would not be reconciled to this. How can I reconcile? They told me: "You know what, Vasya, you have no way out, we will sink you now, and that's it." Won't I resist: "Well, if there is no way out, then drown it"? Therefore, there is no need to talk about this, you need to take care of your salvation. Christian teaching is entirely a teaching about salvation, and St. Ignatius rightly says that salvation is necessary for the perishing. We must all be aware of ourselves as perishing. And in this sense we have a terrible predestination on ourselves: we are all doomed to perdition if we do not make every effort; and with God's help it is hardly possible to be saved. Why should we reason about whether it is predestined or not predetermined? Let's say P. decides that she is predestined to be saved, and she says: "You know what, I won't go to the sewing workshop, because I'm saving myself anyway, you'd better bring me some chocolate. And bring K. here, or I'm bored." Or vice versa, a person who for some reason assumes that there is God's predestination for him, that he will perish, will also not care about his salvation. I do not know whether my opinion is correct from a dogmatic point of view, but it seems to me that God's predestination can be changed both in one direction and in the other. Otherwise, why would it be said in the Apocalypse that the name of anyone who omits something from this book will be struck out of the Book of Life? This means that you can be crossed out. And if someone is expelled, then a place will become vacant and, maybe, I will be registered. That's all. And so we will think: "Everything is predetermined. In the accounting department - it is impossible to save yourself there In the kitchen - yes, you can be saved there."

Question. What do the words of the Savior mean: "For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice of salt shall be salted" (Mark 9:49)?

Answer. For everyone will be salted with fire - this applies to every person. Food without salt for ordinary people, and not for some naturopaths, is tasteless. And everyone knows that since ancient times, food has always been salted. When it is salted, it acquires a taste and becomes suitable for consumption. Salt is added everywhere. If there is no salt, the food becomes disgusting. So it is with every person. If there is a fire of grace in him, a fire of zeal, then he acquires a "taste" and becomes fit for eternal life. And if he doesn't have that, then no matter what he does, nothing will come of it.

And if thy eye complicates thee, pour it out: it is kinder for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye, than to be cast into hell of fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice of salt shall be salted (Mark 9:47-49). That is, if we do not have renunciation, if we do not have such a fierce struggle with ourselves, if there is no such zeal, then our faith loses its meaning. We become unsalted food. And every sacrifice of salt shall be salted. Here the comparison is probably taken from the Old Testament, when sacrifices were made. Every sacrifice to God must be salted. Without jealousy, all our good deeds also lose their meaning. If we do some deeds, but at the same time we do not have the zeal that forces us to fight with ourselves so cruelly, as it is said in the Gospel, then our sacrifice will also be unsalted and therefore tasteless. Good salt, if the salt is not salted, what will be salted? (Mark 9:50). And here salt means all Christians in general. We are the salt of the world. If we lose our saltiness, then we have nothing to salt ourselves from. Have salt in yourself. That is, we need to have jealousy, because otherwise, if we do not have it, then there is nowhere to take it from. We will not get it from anywhere else, from the outside. The word "salt" is used here several times, but in different senses, in relation to different objects. First, we must be salted with fire; secondly, our sacrifice must be salted; thirdly, we must be salted salt, that is, salt that corresponds to its purpose; and fourthly, we must have salt in us, that is, we must not be tasteless and unleavened.

Conversation 2. On the struggle against despondency

Despondency is a serious, terrible passion. John Climacus calls it an all-astonishing death. If a person succumbs to the passion of despondency, then he completely loses the ability for any activity. St. Gregory of Sinai very aptly calls this passion laziness: he does not say "despondency", but says "laziness". Enumerating the eight main passions, giving a classical, if I may say so, classification of them, adopted by the Holy Fathers, instead of the usual expression "passion of despondency" he says: "the passion of laziness, sorrow." It seems to me that the name he proposed is very accurate and explains much better the essence of the action of this passion, such a state of a person when he is attacked by laziness in relation to the spiritual life, to what the Holy Fathers call "mental activity," while despondency is a more abstract concept.

In modern Russian, the expression "mental work" can be translated as "mental work". That is, it is emphasized that spiritual activities are, on the one hand, work, work, work, and on the other hand, that this activity is special, namely the occupation of the mind, the work of the mind. Now by the work of the mind we often understand other things - say, scientific work, literary work, and so on. But in this context of patristic teaching, mental activity is prayer, struggle with passions, attention to oneself, and so on, that is, it is the work of the human spirit. And it is precisely in relation to this work, as Gregory the Sinaite explains, that despondency is laziness. Just as there is laziness in relation to physical labor - for example, someone does not want to work in the garden or engage in construction work - so there is laziness in relation to the spiritual life, to mental work. Therefore, this name is very precise, clear and easy to understand.

St. Gregory of Sinaite speaks of eight main passions. He considers gluttony, love of money, and vanity to be the first among them and the most important, then he enumerates the next five, among which, instead of the usual despondency, he names laziness, and then speaks of the five opposite virtues. And here is what is interesting: he opposes courage to the passion of laziness, and joy to the passion of sorrow. These passions are in some ways close, kindred, and therefore a joyful spirit and courage in the face of temptations, in general, firmness in all matters are necessary qualities for a monk.

In our monastery there are such weak people who are discouraged by everything, almost by the fact that a fly has landed on their noses. I'm just surprised. They always have endless reasons for despondency, although in fact nothing happens that could be paid attention to at all. Why does this happen to these weak people? Because passion is strong in them. For example, a person who has a passion for drinking is always thinking about where to drink. Everywhere he imagines a bottle, different people remind him with whom and when he drank - wherever he looks, everything is connected with drinking. From the outside, it sometimes seems very funny. But when it comes to despondency, everyone stops laughing, because they don't see themselves, and if they looked at themselves from the outside, they would also laugh a lot. When I first started as a spiritual father, I was very worried about my inexperience: "Well, a woman is crying - what have I done?! And then I looked: women were crying all the time, almost into tears. I began to think that this might be natural, normal. And now I don't react at all: although a person in front of my eyes will come out with tears up to dehydration - it doesn't bother me, because I know that all this is worth nothing. I am saying this because from the outside all our despondency looks very ridiculous, there is actually nothing to be discouraged from. Rarely does anyone have any special abuse. For the most part, in a monastery, a person is almost delivered from sorrows by obedience, labor, and the revelation of thoughts. He has no real sorrows, everything is taken upon himself by the leaders of the brotherhood or sisterhood, that is, the spiritual father, the abbess - all the burden falls on them. They take care of everyone, both spiritually and physically, so that others may be given the opportunity to live without sorrow. This is the most important advantage of a coenobitic monastery - a sorrowless life. That is, although a person does not have that solitude, that silence, and that time that seem necessary to him for spiritual feats, he does not have any worries either. And this sorrowlessness, if it is used wisely, gives a person the opportunity to acquire what he cannot acquire even in solitude due to inexperience, that is, attentive prayer, makes it possible, with all his seeming busyness, to watch over his soul, because he knows that others will take care of everything, including even his soul. His job is only to selflessly follow this path and not to turn away from it.

Maybe this is the property of the female sex, or rather, young girls - to cry and be sad. They have not yet encountered any difficulties in life, they are not accustomed to struggle with them, they have not yet had real sorrows, and so, encountering the simplest difficulties of monastic life, they succumb to the weakening of their strength and even abandon their podvig, lose their zeal - in other words, they fall out of the blue. True, it happens that people who already have experience of life, from the sorrowless state that the order of a coenobitic monastery bestows, become extremely sensitive to all sorts of even the most insignificant difficulties, and this passion sometimes develops in a person to such an extent that even he himself is sometimes surprised at how quickly he loses his spiritual balance from completely insignificant things. And all because he desires the impossible: having received a life without sorrow in regard to bodily cares, he wants to become completely unsorrowful in regard to the inner life, that is, not to wage any struggle. If, like people living in the world, he were distracted by earning his own food and overcoming all kinds of difficulties of worldly life, from which he himself must somehow find a way out, by illnesses (especially when there is no one to take care of him), by family sorrows, then perhaps he would not then have the opportunity to pay attention to all sorts of petty spiritual experiences, which he now notices and from which he comes to spiritual weakness. Instead of struggling with all thoughts in this carefree way of life and lashing out with fury at the mental enemy, we, having received such inner freedom, begin to watch our sorrows: having no true, serious misfortunes, we begin to see small and almost fantastic ones. Imagine a person who does not leave the house. He is afraid to go out for fear that he will suddenly be attacked by hooligans, or that it will rain, and he will get wet and catch a cold, or some other trouble will happen to him. And the longer he sits at home, the more fears and apprehensions he has. He begins to listen to everything: a mouse rustled somewhere, and it seems to him that it is already attacking enemies, a neighbor coughs, and it seems to him that the apartment is about to be blown up, and so on and so forth. You know, there is such a state, probably many have experienced, when hearing, vision are sharpened, imagination develops - and imaginary enemies are drawn in the imagination of a person. The same thing happens in our country. We live in a monastery as if in a closed world and, like this person, whose senses and imagination are sharpened, we begin to exaggerate the events that happen to us.

A normal person, if he were in solitude, would use this time, for example, to read and relax, but the one who has fear inside, who has a morbidly developed imagination, cannot do anything, since he constantly watches what seems to him to be happening behind the wall and what he does not see in the dark. And therefore he can neither rest nor do anything, and all his attention is directed to these imaginary dangers. However, all these dangers and sorrows exaggerated by fantasy, our very fantasy do more harm to a person than real, real sorrow, we create an enemy for ourselves. Of course, all this is not happening without satanic participation, but why should we succumb to it? We blame everything on the devil, blame everything on demons who tempt us, make us despondent, and we ourselves seem to be not to blame. Some sisters ask for advice, and you don't even know what to say to them, because, in fact, there is nothing to console a person and nothing to prompt him. For here the point is not that they have sorrows, from which they become despondent, but the point is that they have despondency, which seeks sorrows, they themselves, so to speak, only wait for an occasion to satisfy their passion - this happens in the overwhelming majority of cases. After all, all the difficulties that one has to endure in the monastery are not new, and there is nothing particularly terrible in them. This happens to everyone and always, and many of you already know how to cope with it from the words of the eldress or from the books of the Holy Fathers you have read, so that you could tell others. However, all instructions are forgotten, because passion seeks a reason for its satisfaction. This also applies to other passions, such as anger, gluttony, and condemnation. A person who is inclined, for example, to condemnation, will condemn everyone in a row and for everything, both having a reason and not having it. An irritable person will be irritated by everything, no matter what he encounters, whatever he sees, although in fact there was no reason, no one tried to make him lose his temper; he himself suspects enemies everywhere and even to such an extent that he thinks that people deliberately want to do something to make him angry and lose his peace of mind.